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full force of the Confederate left and centre, even McCook's left division, under Sheridan, falling back, its ammunition being exhausted, behind Thomas. Such was the force of the attack here that Thomas was necessitated to withdraw his two right divisions, under Negley and Rousseau, to a more open and favourable position behind his centre; a movement very ably executed, but with heavy loss, a battalion of regulars losing 530 men. The new ground taken, however, like Thomas's last position at Chickamauga, was held against every effort of Bragg to take it. So matters stood at nightfall, when darkness put an end to the conflict.

At the close of the day our army, while it held its final position, had lost half the ground it occupied in the morning and, including its killed, wounded, and missing, full one-fourth its number, and quite an equal proportion of its guns; while the Confederate cavalry held full possession of our communications, and were plundering at will our baggage and supplies.

The next day both armies remained quiet in their respective positions, a few artillery duels excepted. The second battle, January 2nd, was in most respects a repetition of the first; the Confederates in this instance assailing in great force our left and left centre, and driving them back as they had before done with our right and right centre, until they encountered our batteries, which ploughed through and through them, and compelled them to fall back with the loss of four guns and a considerable number of prisoners. Night setting in prevented any pursuit on the part of our commander. Heavy rains prevented any special movements of either army until the evening of January 3rd, when General Bragg retreated so quietly that even our pickets did not suspect the movement until the next morning. On the day following, our army entered Murfreesborc', where it found about 1,500 of the enemy's sick and wounded left, with medical attendants, in hospitals there.

In these two days' battles Rosecrans admits a loss on our part of 3,778 killed and wounded. Bragg puts his loss at 10,000 in killed, wounded, and missing, and claims to have taken from us on the field and by his cavalry raids,

between Murfreesboro' and Nashville, 6,273 prisoners, 30 guns-he losing 3-6,000 small arms, and vast stores of valuable spoils, besides burning upwards of 800 army waggons, with all their contents. The loss on our part was undeniably far greater than on that of the Confederates. Their retreat, however, leaves the claim of victory to our brave army and its able commander. During the winter following, raids were the order of the day on both sides; the Confederates, on account of their superiority in cavalry, doing us far more injury than they received from us.

Aside from the honour of final mastery of the field, the battle of Murfreesboro' was wholly barren of results on either side. The armies, being nearly equal in number and discipline, slaughtered each other to more than onefourth their number, and then the Confederates went on their way, and the Unionists returned to Nashville. Yet, with no blame whatever to General Rosecrans, no other excuse can be offered for such a battle than the most stupid ignorance on the part of our Commander-in-Chief. We had, as we have seen, at the time when, with an army less than 50,000 strong, Rosecrans moved out from Nashville, we had in the field quite 1,000,000 men, "fully armed and equipped;" and next to the sphere of the army of the Potomac, that of the Cumberland was the most important in the war. What excuse was there, then, in compelling, as he was really compelled to move, the commander of this army to fight a great national battle with an army less than 100,000 strong. Had this amount of force been furnished our General, the battle of Murfreesboro' would practically have ended the Rebellion, as far as the Confederate States between the Savannah and Mississippi rivers are concerned. But with the stupid unwisdom which controlled our war counsels, 60,000 men could not be at the time furnished for the army of the Cumberland, or for that of the Potomac.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG AND PORT HUDSON.

ON the 16th October, 1862, the department of General Grant was enlarged, so as to include both West Tennessee and Mississippi. On receiving this command, he at once commenced preparations for the capture of Vicksburg. On the 4th July, eight and a half months from that time, our army entered the city, and took possession of its strongholds. The capture of this post has been regarded by perhaps a majority of the people of this country as a feat of masterly generalship, and did, in connexion with the short command of General Grant at Chattanooga, elevate him to the supreme command of our armies, and finally secured for him two elections to the Presidency of these United States. We have never agreed with the estimate placed upon the military character of this transaction. To us, it wears, for the most part, the same dull aspect which generally characterized the conduct of this war. Leaving, in his advance from Grand Junction to Oxford, his depôt of arms, munitions, and provisions, containing property valued at $4,000,000, at Holly Springs, guarded but by an effective force of about 1,000 men, when it was well known that the enemy was watching every opportunity to fall upon our communications and cut off our supplies, cannot but be justly regarded as a very gross blunder. Then, on account of such a disaster, which was at once repaired, to abandon the important line of advance by Jackson, and make that long detour round to Memphis and down the Mississippi, seems indicative of a palpable want of military wisdom. Then, Sherman's assault upon Vicksburg, an assault in which

column after column of infantry were hurled against impregnable defences, involved not only a useless but imprudent and most excuseless slaughter of brave men. In his criticisms on the siege of Vicksburg, General Sherman remarks that had General Grant continued, as he undeniably might have done, his advance upon the place, in the direction in which he was moving when he retreated back from Oxford, and made the detour round through Corinth, Memphis, and down the Mississippi, he would have captured the place in January instead of the following July. In this statement, General Sherman is undeniable correct. These fundamental errors deprive General Grant of all just renown in this campaign, namely, leaving his immense supplies behind him under guard of but about 1,000 men, where his guard and supplies were certain to be seized by the enemy; making the loss of those supplies the occasion for the abandonment of the only proper line of advance, and taking the wide detour under consideration; and, finally, locating his great army where it could do nothing whatever having the remotest tendency to secure the object of the campaign, and then utterly wasting six months' time in doing, as we shall see, the most senseless and absurd things of which a commander can conceive.

We must bear in mind also that the investment of Vicksburg was effected on the morning of the 19th May, and that prior to this time the city had in no sense or form been besieged, the siege proper continuing but fortyfive days. What had our great army been doing during the previous six months? Without making any approaches towards the city, or erecting batteries which could reach any of its defences, our immense forces during this entire period were lying in idleness, dreaming of some "good time coming," or were most senselessly employed in canal and ditch digging, for the purposes of cutting the city off from the mainland by flanking the fortifications at Haines's Bluff on the Yazoo, or conveying our fleet round through dead lagoons into the Mississippi below the city. The number of these ditches and canals thus built is too numerous to be described. A notice of one, and that the most important, must suffice. Some

160 miles in direct line above the city, quite 200 by the river, Moon Lake approaches within a few miles of the Mississippi on the east side. Out of this lake the Yazoo Pass enters a small river named Cold Water. This, a few miles below the Pass, uniting with another stream, forms the Tallahatchee, and this some sixty or seventy miles below unites with the Yallabusha, and forms the Yazoo river. All these are narrow and slow streams, sufficiently deep, however, to float ironclads. At the expense of months of time and immense labour, a ditch was dug from the Mississippi into the lake designated, and a passage was opened for our vessels into the Cold Water. The object of opening this new line of communication was to flank the Confederate fortifications at Yazoo City and Haines's Bluff, fortifications too strong to be captured by assaults from our fleets and land forces by a movement from near Vicksburg up the Yazoo. At length, after untold labour and the loss of months of time, the expedition sailed, or rather steamed off; three toilsome days being spent in getting through Moon Lake and Yazoo Pass. The armament consisted of a division of land forces 5,000 strong under General Ross, of two large gunboats, five smaller ones, and eighteen transports; two mortarboats being afterwards sent down. This expedition, whose preparation had been long before announced to the nation and world through the press, and was fully understood throughout the Confederacy, was expected, after "finding out its uncouth way" for more than 150 miles down these narrow and tortuous rivers, to capture, right in the presence of General Johnston's army, first Fort Pemberton, at the junction of the Tallahatchee and Yallabusha rivers, then the strong fortifications at Yazoo City, and finally to move down, and in connexion with the fleet from below, to assault and capture the still stronger fortifications at Haines's Bluff. The Confederates of course looked on and laughed at the folly, and our grand flotilla, with its 5,000 land forces, at the point where it encountered the first battery erected to resist its progress, was driven back, with two of its ironclads not a little crippled, and slowly returned from its "Tom Fool's errand" to its point of departure. This was the third and most de

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